I decided to take a small break from my thesis and try to put up a post again. So I was grazing on the web trying to find something interesting, and I came across this:
Fire would have helped early humans stay warm and keep nighttime predators at bay, and enabled cooking, which would have made food more digestible. In addition, “socializing around a campfire might actually be an essential aspect of what makes us human,” Chazan said. “The control of fire would have been a major turning point in human evolution.”
The original report is about findings that suggest that humans used fire earlier than had been assumed so far. This statement here caught my attention because it highlights something important; how fire influenced humans. The use of fire makes it possible to cook meat and thus transforms our diet but I have not thought about the socializing part. I ll go out on a limb here and relate this to my thesis where I noticed:
The marble run is central to the activity as it is occupying a space that is designed and redesigned during the playing. The children organize themselves around the object and change proxemics depending on what they want to do.
My data shows 4 children gathered around a marble track, much like they were sitting around a fire-place, as they interact with their toy and talk about it. In both cases, a tool is located in the center of the activity and it seems to be the “thing” that makes people organize around it which then leads to several forms of interaction.
A place for inspiration
Is there an analogy to be made between people sitting in caves around a fireplace and children gathered around a marble track? After all in the first quote it is stated that these gatherings are essential and “part of what makes us human”. The marble track might not be shining in bright lights, heating up the environment and sizzle like a campfire does, but it provides the opportunity to create. While the children construct their track and watch the marbles run down, they might find inspiration and relaxation in the experience of handling the object. Davin D. Thornburg has an interesting paper on “Campfires in Cyberspace” where he relates storytelling and campfire to teaching as he writes:
There is a sacred quality to teaching as storytelling, and this activity took place in sacred places, typically around the fire. The focal point of the flame, the sounds of the night, all provide backdrop to the storyteller who shares wisdom with students who, in their turn, become storytellers to the next generation. In this manner, culture replicates itself through the DNA of myth.
He relates back to my point when he quotes Robert Frost stating:
We sit in the circle and suppose, while the truth sits in the center and knows.
Even though neither the campfire nor the marble track work on their own, they provide rich opportunities that can probably be used to gather and learn from each other. All of this raises questions like:
Why are we not using this layout for the design of classrooms or workplaces? How can we use objects to stimulate interaction and what kind of interactions are taking place there?
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